Documents of the federal government include the following:

• Declaration of Independence

• United States Constitution

• Bill of Rights

Declaration of Independence

• You have learned from previous lessons that the American colonies were becoming more and more  dissatisfied with being governed by Great Britain, and in the spring of 1776, the new American government formed a committee to tell everyone why the colonies wanted to be free from British rule.  Thomas Jefferson was chosen to head the committee.  He was not a good speaker, but he was an excellent writer, so he wrote the document which was to be known as the Declaration of Independence.

This document  was important in the development of the government.  It contains three parts:

A.  IDEALS of the nation

B.  COMPLAINTS about the British King

C. ARGUMENTS why we thought we had the  right to free ourselves from British rule.

A.  The ideals included items that we would like in a perfect world, such as the idea that all people are created equal.  

B.  The document includes a very long list of what we didn't like about the British rule.  This list included:

• The King refused to approve laws made by the colonists.

• He kept armies in the colonies even before there was a war!!

• He taxed the colonists without their saying it was OK.   NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION was the colonists' motto!

C.  One of the arguments the colonists used to justify their writing the Declaration of Independence was the fact that the King had broken his agreement to honor the peoples' individual rights.

              In Summary, the Declaration of Independence was a document written in 1776, outlining why we wanted and deserved to be, a free nation.  It included three main parts:  the ideals of the new nation, what complaints were against the King of England, and why they could justify those complaints.

The Declaration of Independence celebrated its 225th anniversary in 2001.  In honor of that anniversary, one of the original documents toured the US.  Read about that Road Trip!  in Time for Kids!

The colonists needed a plan for their new government.  The first plan was called The Articles of Confederation.  It was approved by all the states in 1781 and was used as the plan of government for 6 years before the states realized that some changes needed to be made.  So a group of fifty-five representatives met in Philadelphia in 1787 and wrote the present Constitution in less than 4 months.  This Constitution has lasted over 200 years with just minor revisions.

United States Constitution

When the fifty-five representatives (all men) got together they immediately agreed on 4 things:

1.  George Washington would be the president of the convention.

2.  Each state, regardless of size, would have one vote at the convention.

3.  They would not try to rewrite the Articles of Confederation.  They thought it had too many faults. They would write a whole new document.

4.  Here is an interesting fact: they decided they would keep the discussions private.  In fact they decided that what was said by whom at the convention would be kept secret for 30 years.   The reasons behind this were

• a.) they thought representatives would speak more freely and

• b.) they wanted the people in the states to think that all the representatives had wanted it.  They wanted to appear as one group, not 55 separate people.

With this list in place, they got to the business of writing a Constitution for the new United States government.  There were, of course, many questions.  Among those questions was how strong to make the federal government's power over the states.

They were just getting out of a "King" type of power, and they did not want the new government to resemble that type of power. So they came up with the idea of Three Branches of Government, with no branch more powerful than another.  The three branches were named the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive.

• Legislative Branch was given the power to make laws.  That branch is called Congress, and it has the Senate and the House of Representatives (more on these later).

• Executive Branch was given the power to enforce the laws.  The President would be the head of this branch.

• Judicial Branch has the power to settle disagreements about the meaning of the laws.  The Supreme Court is the highest court in the United States.

They also designed not only the separation of the power, but a system of checks and balances on each other.  It was truly a well thought out piece of writing.

    One of the  problems they had to solve was how many representatives each state should have in Congress.  Of course the large states thought they should have more representation than the smaller ones.  The smaller states thought all 13 states should have equal representation.  The answer was known as the Great Compromise.  It allowed the following to happen: 

• Congress would have two parts or houses.  One was the Senate and one was the House of Representatives.  In the Senate each state would have 2 representatives.  In the House of Representatives a state's number of representatives would be based on its population.  

This was important because it meant each state would have the same number of members in the Senate, but the more populous states would have a larger number in the House of Representatives.  However, no law could be passed unless  both Houses passed it.

In summary, the Constitution provided a plan for the new government.  This plan included three branches of government: the Executive with the President as its head, the Judicial with the Supreme Court, and the Legislative with the two Houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives.  This document, written in just four months, as lasted well over 200 years.

Bill of Rights

After the Constitution was ratified there were still those people that thought the rights of the people were not protected enough, so they added a Bill of Rights in 1791, four years after the original Constitution was ratified.  This Bill of Rights included 10 amendments to the Constitution.  Among these 10 amendments were:

1.  The right to freedom of religion (can worship as you please).

2.  The right to bear arms (can carry a weapon).

3.  The right to a fair trial (can have a lawyer hired for you).

4. The right to a trial by jury (can have a group of people called a jury hear and decide your case).

In summary, the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution to make sure every citizen of the United States was treated more fairly.

DEFINITIONS:

dissatisfied:  not happy with something or someone.

committee: a group of people who joined together to make a decision on something.

ideal:  something perfect that we try to achieve

complaints:  faults found with something or someone

argument: a reason to be against something

revision: the act of making a change to correct or improve

compromise: a way of dealing with a problem where each side gives up something in order to reach a solution.

enforce: carry out

ratify: to approve (say yes), usually by a vote

amendment:  a formal change made to the existing Constitution

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